EVILSPEAK (1981)
Article 4932 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 9-19-2015
Directed by Eric Weston
Featuring Clint Howard, R.G. Armstrong, Joe Cortese
Country: USA
What it is: Bloody horror

An outcast at a military academy discovers a demonic sanctuary underneath an old church and calls forth a demon to take revenge on his tormentors.

This is what happens when you cross CARRIE with THE OMEN and DADDY’S DEADLY DARLING; a bloody revenge story with Latin chants on the soundtrack and deadly killer pigs. It does get quite bloody before it’s all over, but things don’t really start happening until the final third of the movie. Reportedly, the violence was so extreme that the movie had to be cut to get an R rating. The Blu-Ray I watched of this claimed that all of the gory footage had been restored, but given that the movie still runs four minutes shy of its longer running time listed on IMDB, I have my doubts. The movie is just okay; part of the problem I have with it is that the tormentors are such a one-dimensional bunch that it becomes a little cartoonish, and since the first two-thirds of the movie is mostly just the main character being tormented, it gets a little tiresome. The use of the computer seems more gimmicky than necessary, though I will admit the language translation software that is used by the computer seems to be more advanced that any modern ones. How scary it is may well depend on just how scary you find a sword-wielding demonic floating Clint Howard.